In recent years, many different types of automated apparatuses have been introduced in medical fields to save the labor associated with laboratory test operations. During the laboratory test operations in a hospital, inpatient and outpatient samples to be tested are collected in various sections of the hospital and then subjected to batch processing in a test room. Sample-specific laboratory test items are communicated from doctors to the test room through an online information-processing system. Conversely, test results are reported on-line from the test room to each doctor.
A large majority of test items on blood and urine require centrifugation, destoppering, dispensing/aliquoting, and other test preprocessing operations, and these operations account for a high percentage of the total testing time required.
Next, an operational flow of a general, automated sample test system is outlined below. Test tubes containing the blood and other body fluids which have been sampled from patients are placed in a samples rack and loaded into the system. The system then reads bar code information from labels attached to each loaded sample, and recognizes a type of the sample.
As mentioned above, there are such test preprocessing operations as centrifugation, destoppering, and dispensing/aliquoting (hereinafter, referred to simply as dispensing). The kind and/or details of preprocessing required, however, differ according to the type of test to be conducted. For example, centrifugation may not be required for urinary tests. When the sample test type requires centrifuging, then destoppering and dispensing follow the centrifuging operation. Dispensing is a process for creating child samples from a parent sample, and this process allows subdivided child samples to be simultaneously conveyed to, for example, a plurality of analyzers connected on-line to the system. The dispensing process also includes a function that, in order to conduct tests in offline analyzers not connected to the system, unloads onto a sorting tray the child samples to which is attached the same bar code as that of the parent sample. Samples that have gone through all processing steps are stored into a storage unit.
Automated sample test systems such as the one outlined above are usually introduced into medical facilities of a relatively large scale, and the fact is that hundreds to thousands of patient samples undergo processing in one day at these facilities. At the large-scale facilities, a plurality of samples are taken from one patient, for conducting biochemical tests, immunological tests, coagulation tests, and various other tests. Hence, the number of samples racks loaded into the automated sample test system has needed to match the above throughput, and a space for placing and storing these racks has also been required.
As described in Patent Document 1, for example, a conventional unit for loading samples racks into an automated sample test system is known to employ a scheme in which a large quantity of samples racks are set up in an apparatus in order to conduct appropriate processing according to the type of sample.
In addition, Patent Document 2 describes a scheme intended to reduce a placement area for a large quantity of samples racks by setting up these samples racks in certain numbers collectively on trays, then arranging each of these trays in multiple tiers for both a samples rack supply unit and a samples rack recovery unit, and supplying/recovering each samples rack by means of an elevator mechanism of a vertically driven type.
Patent Document 3 proposes a scheme for coupling an apparatus to an endlessly operating type of conveyance line and repeatedly routing samples racks to enable reuse of the racks.
Patent Document 4 introduces a scheme for arranging a plurality of conveyance lines near a loading unit, stocking samples racks on each of the conveyance lines, and repeatedly routing each of the samples racks for reuse.